Raising Awareness of Deforestation

Year 5 at Dean Bank Primary School in County Durham explain how they made a difference to the issue of deforestation

We had a few different ideas about how to raise awareness of the problem of deforestation. The first thing we did was to hold an assembly about the issue for our school, to let everyone know about our make a difference project. We made posters and leaflets to hand out to the classes that wanted more information about this problem and set up an eco-team who raised awareness about the importance of recycling paper in school and collected recycling from each classroom on a daily basis. Whilst we were on our residential trip, we developed our knowledge about deforestation even further by discussing the issue with a nature expert.

“It was great that we raised £100 for a rainforest charity because we know it will help to protect trees”

Year 5 pupil

Finally, we held a Deforestation Awareness Day on Friday 21st June where everyone had to bring in £1 and dress up in green and brown like a tree! On the day, we also held an art competition where children paid 30p to enter a painting, drawing or collage of the rainforest to win prizes and we made biscuits and cakes for a bake sale. We publicised our Deforestation Awareness Day on the school’s Facebook page and in the school newsletter so everyone in our school community would know what was happening and why we were trying to raise money.

“In the future I would want to do more work about deforestation and try to help raise more money”

Year 5 pupil

We think our project was a success because we raised £100 for the Rainforest Alliance and our before and after surveys showed we had really helped to improve people’s awareness of the problem of deforestation because they knew more about the issue at the end of our project than they did when we started it.

We want more people to help with the issue of deforestation so we have some tips on things you can do to help:

• Try to have an extra vegetarian meal a week because this makes a massive difference to the number of trees destroyed for cattle farming
• Reduce, reuse, recycle
• Try to buy more products that are made from recycled goods if they are available

Sign up for the Make a Difference Challenge.